Alethea, a D.C.-based company that offers an AI-powered disinformation monitoring platform, said Tuesday it has raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Google Ventures.
The company, led by founder and CEO Lisa Kaplan, said it will use the new funding to scale its sales and marketing efforts, grow its headcount and to expand its Artemis platform, which it says can detect the first signs of cyberattacks, disinformation and misinformation narratives, and domestic and foreign influence operations earlier than previously possible.
Along with Mountain View, California’s Google Ventures, other participants in the round include San Francisco’s Ballistic Ventures, a previous investor in the company, as well as London’s Hakluyt Capital. The round brings Alethea's total funding to $34 million.
Today, Alethea customers include Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits and governments. Its Artemis platform can detect and assess risks of disinformation on niche social media platforms, alternative forums and known extremist communities, the company said. It can also alert concerns about malicious actors, vulnerable assets and even threats of physical violence. Alethea’s technology was used in a recent New York Times report detailing how Russian operatives have begun using fake versions of news websites in their social media campaigns to undermine support for Ukraine.
Alethea said the new investment is a testament to investor confidence in its capabilities and impact.
"We built our Artemis product to move organizations from passive listening to active risk management,” Kaplan said in a statement. “Since the launch, our customers have been able to use Artemis to detect and prebunk threats early, use our insights to inform mitigation responses, and better protect themselves from increasingly sophisticated adversaries."
Alethea was founded in 2019 and today counts around 50 employees. Kaplan told Axios the company will grow its headcount to about 75 behind the new funding. Karim Faris, general partner at Google Ventures, is joining Alethea's board as part of the new funding, according to the report.
